For a hopefully relaxing Sunday morning, a few scenes from the garden to put your spirit at ease. Mother Nature is still failing to cooperate for the most part, but our plants are gamely working away during an unusually cold and rainy summer. What? You thought that somebody who totally fails to qualify as a liberal could enjoy working in a garden? Remember… even Hitler painted landscapes and flowers.(There are full size images available by clicking on the thumbnails below.) The sweet corn...

Thinking of all the books you’ve ever read, common stories passed down from generation to generation, the lives of real people who you find interesting, radio shows or more, what movie would you like to see made which has never been produced? Or, to widen the field a bit, we could include movies which actually were made, but were done poorly or before the technology was available to do them justice. In the fiction / sci-fi field, I’ve been wondering for some time why we haven’t...

How much of a debt do we owe to those who have paid their debt to society? In the 1962 classic, Birdman of Alcatraz, Burt Lancaster plays the role of Robert Stroud, a double murderer who learns to care for tender young birds while in the lonely hole of solitary confinement. The killer goes on to become one or our foremost authorities on ornithological matters, winning over our hearts in the process. By the end we are left wondering why Mr. Stroud couldn’t have been set free to spend his declining...

We just HAD to spend all that money on the stimulus plan. We all know this, because if we didn’t we would have been thrust into the worst economic disaster since the great depression. Heck, maybe worse! There were flying monkeys reported in many parts of the nation and nary a ruby slipper in sight. As our friend Yid with Lid reports, initial reports of the demise of the United States economy may have been exaggerated. The supposed stimulus bill had little or nothing to do with the turnaround....

If I were you, I’d be on the lookout for pale horsemen flying through the skies, because in addition to other signs of a pending apocalypse, Keith Olberman has named our friend and very conservative pundit, Ed Morrissey, as the best person on the world. Initial rumors that Olberman had: (a) confused him with Ed Schulz, or, (b) suffered from some sort of unfortunate neuro-cardial event, were quickly dismissed. The news of this prestigious award, of course, sends Allahpundit into spasms of confusion...

Some of them clearly carry heavy traffic, at least in relative terms. For those of us who are addicted to politics and regularly haunt sites like TMV, we probably think this is a fairly important and mainstream topic. But it seems that there are other subjects which draw considerably more eyeballs on the old intertubes. I found an article referencing one such avocation which seems to dwarf political blogs in popularity. Before you click through the jump, can you guess what it is and put your suggestion...

Astroturfing is with us now, for better or worse, and everyone is doing it. To stretch the inevitable football analogy to the breaking point, modern technology has put Astroturf in every stadium across the nation, except possibly a few of the smallest high schools. This is the subject of my column this week at Pajamas Media, Of Course There’s Astroturfing by the GOP. As always, I invite you to read, share your thoughts, and for my Republican friends, get your hate on!

Just a reminder, in case you’re going to be around, that my partner in crime and I will be back on the air at 10 am Eastern time this morning with another edition of Mid Stream Radio. While I’ve grown weary of writing about the subject here and ramming my head into walls, we’ll tackle the question of whether or not health care reform has become the new abortion question in this country, with both sides so fired up and angry that they’re just out for blood most of the opponents...

As covered in the Washington Post this week, NASA has released its latest report on their ability to locate and track dangerous objects in our solar system which have the potential to cross our orbit and possibly impact the Earth. (Full .pdf report is available from JPL here.) The news isn’t great. Congress tasked NASA several years ago with the job of locating the lion’s share of an estimated 20,000 asteroids and comets buzzing around the sun. The task was to be completed by 2020. To...

Representative Niki Tsongas (D-MA) bravely showed up at a town hall to discuss health care reform, and rather than being shouted down, (thankfully) she got the chance to take a serious question from one of the people in the audience. (Please see the full story and video from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.) CONSTITUENT: My question to you, Congresswoman Tsongas, is that if this is such a great plan, why did you opt out of it when you took the vote [loud applause, standing ovation]? TSONGAS: People often...

I know all about being a die hard fan, so immersed in your belief that you tend to deny reality. After all, I’m a veteran of decades of support for the New York Jets. (This is the year! I SWEAR it is this time!) Unfortunately, we sometimes have to face up to the fact that our team simply sucks. This is a lesson that could prove useful to “Smitty” over at The Other McCain blog, when he decides to proclaim that Rick Moran is “a blowhard.” The bee in his bonnet on this...

I was outside this morning having my first cup of coffee and looking at the dismal progress of my tomatoes, (which are totally failing to ripen) and it got me to thinking about the odd weather we’ve been having this summer. Summer is, of course, the traditional hurricane season, but have you seen many of them in the news? I haven’t seen much about it in the blogosphere. I stopped by the National Hurricane Center to take a peek at what was coming down the pipe. Click on the image for the...

I can’t quite make out her name in all the clutter, but based on her profile she apparently lost her job recently and, as such, might understandably be very concerned about making sure she had health care for her and her very large family. More from the mother of several: [W]ho will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of...

Josh Greenman of the New York Daily News takes a look at the partisan divide in Washington, which recent polls indicate has gotten wider, not narrower, in the Age of Obama, and concludes that it’s not the fault of the president. In his view, it’s people… not presidents… who are tearing the country asunder. It’s an interesting view, and I have to admit that the red blue chasm in this nation is pretty big to pin on one individual, no matter how influential they may be. As...

Mitt Romney has inked a deal to publish a new book in March of 2010, just in time for the mid-term election season and setting himself up nicely to launch a 2012 bid for the White House. Titled “No Apologies,” it seems fairly clear what ground the former Mass. governor is seeking to stake out, possibly giving a boost to his party’s message as they try to climb back from the minority office in Congress. Titled “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” the book outlines what...

I don’t see how anyone could have possibly predicted this. Seventy-one percent (71%) of U.S. voters say President Obama’s policies have increased the size of the federal deficit, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. A plurality of voters (37%) say cutting the federal deficit in half in the next four years is number one among the four priorities the president listed in a speech to Congress in February, but 66% view it as the goal he is least likely to achieve. Eighty-one...

It’s now official. El Tinklenberg is dropping out of the race to remove Michele Bachmann (R-Mars) from her seat for Minnesota’s sixth Congressional District. Apparently, there were enough Democrats interested in sending Michele a one way ticket back to Crazytown that Tinklenberg didn’t want to be involved in the internecine bloodbath. This may be a result of too many Democrats sensing that Bachmann is going to be particularly vulnerable, or just the usual jousting for a shot at...

Since you all never seem to be able to get enough of me and my endless supply of wit, I’ll be the guest on The Ed Morrissey show today, starting shortly at 3 pm ET. Just follow the link and be sure to register for a free user account at uStream if you don’t have one already if you want to chat. After that, at 4 pm ET, I’ll be cohosting as usual at Betty Jo Tucker’s Movie Addict Headquarters, where we will do a review of movies based on TV shows. Let’s see if I can think...

That’s the point being brought up by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty in a recent op-ed, as brought to us by my radio partner in crime, the Lady Logician. For reasons which we’ll explore below, T-Paw seems to be picking an ideal time to dip a toe into this particular pool, and will be pointing to the health care program which was set up in his home state as a way for the rest of the nation to proceed. In Minnesota, our state employee health-care plan has demonstrated incredible results...

It’s not hard to understand why some supporters of the Democratic majority are in such a hurry to push through a massive health care reform bill before everyone has a chance to weigh in and gain some consensus. Rasmussen has finished yet another round of polling which indicates that a significant majority of Americans don’t really feel that we’re hovering in the range of third world nations when it comes to either coverage or care. (You can view the specific questions and percentages...

Who are the real blowhards in Congress or politics in general? You’d have to work pretty hard to beat the legacy of Godzilla. With that in mind, Cranky T-Rex brings on a new tradition of naming The Godzilla Awards for the best blowhards. The first recipient will likely not come as much of a surprise. Welcome aboard, my dino-friend.

Lesson number 213 on how to remain in the minority for a long time no matter how badly the Democrats drive the nation’s economy toward the event horizon of a fiscal black hole. Oppose one of the few popular things that Congress has managed to do with your tax dollars. If the Senate doesn’t agree to cough up another 2 billion dollars for the Cash for Clunkers program to match the House’s vote, it will be shut down. Republicans say the problems with the program are another strike...

Orrin Hatch may not be loving the Democrats’ health care reform plans. Of course, for a moment there, I thought he might be, since he referred to it as being “out of this world.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who has a long history of teaming up with Democrats on healthcare legislation, says Democratic healthcare reform plans now under consideration are “out of this world.” Hatch also told The Hill in a Friday interview he would be “shocked” if Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)...

It’s test time for the Legislative branch of our government. As the Associated Press correctly points out, House members and Senators are now heading home where they will face questions, criticism and scrutiny from their many employers (i.e. the voters) who will decide in the months and years to come whether or not they will keep their jobs. The problem they face in this test is the same one which comes around every few years and both parties are plagued by it. Each party has to deal with the...

When it comes to questions of how we’re going to pay for health care reform, clean air initiatives and everything else up to and including free ponies for everyone, many self-styled pundits have been crying out that we should tax the poncy, bourgeoisie bastards who hoard all the cash. “The rich should pay their fair share!” That’s the cry we hear. You may want to read the following and then ask yourself exactly what their “fair share” really is. Tax Burden of Top...